


The Rose

by IsraelKami



Series: Nightclub AU [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nightclub, Established Relationship, Fade to Black, M/M, No Spoilers for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Romance, Songfic, YES BETA WE LIVE UNLIKE GLENN
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25186015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsraelKami/pseuds/IsraelKami
Summary: Yuri Leclerc owns the Abyss Nightclub in downtown Fódlan and runs a tight ship with his husband, Balthus von Albrecht. Open from 8:00 pm to 3:00 am, Abyss Nightclub is home to a variety of patrons. But this is not their story. It's closing time at the Nightclub.
Relationships: Balthazar von Adalbrecht | Balthus von Albrecht/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Series: Nightclub AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824529
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Third piece written for FE:3H Song Week.
> 
> The Rose, by Bette Midler, from the feature film of the same name. 
> 
> This is my gift to the underfed Balthuri community and for Balthus' Birthday!

The cool night air blasted through the open door in front of Yuri as he held it open. The quiet in the dull gray entrance to the Abyss Nightclub was broken by the muffled sound of voices behind the door leading to the dance floor. He chuckled as they stumbled towards the front door. Yuri let his gaze linger on the cloudy night sky for just a moment longer before he turned his attention to the last small group of very drunk patrons 

“Did you all have a good time while you were here?” He nodded at the group of three.

“You know it, Mr. Leclerc!” giggled one of the girls who had to lean on a friend just to keep walking. “We’ll be back here tomorrow night for sure!”

“Leonie, you’re here almost every night.” Yuri chuckled at the girl’s grin.

“We had a great time Mr. Leclerc. Thank you for your hospitality again.” The sole man nodded in Yuri’s direction. “Now, let’s get you home so you yell at me tomorrow for letting you drink too much.” 

“It’s my pleasure Lorenz. Best of luck with Leonie.”

“Yuri, your nightclub is the best in town!” The third member of the trio piped up. “Make sure to tell the cute bouncer hi for me!” She pushed the other two towards the exit and waved at Yuri. 

“Have a good night Hilda, and make sure that you get home safe.” Yuri shot the last of his customers a practiced smile as they exited the dimly lit front room to Abyss Nightclub, flipping the open sign to closed once he shut the door behind them. He turned around with a heavy sigh and wiped the slight sweat off of his forehead. Three in the morning had never come so slow. 

Now that he was finally alone in the entrance and the club was quiet, he straightened up and made his way towards the dance floor, where his employees had begun cleaning up. Across the large room, his two regular bartenders were hard at work cleaning the bar and making sure everything was in its place. Meanwhile, a short man was energetically shuffling a large broom across the floor, disturbing the remnants of the machine-created fog from that night. On the right side of the room, a well-built blonde man stood in front of a black box and had a hand on one of the switches.

Once colorful blinking lights of purple, red and blue dancing between the floor and ceiling shut off; only to be replaced abruptly with blinding white, much to Yuri’s chagrin. 

“Raphael, a little warning next time, okay? That’s a bright light,” Yuri blinked repeatedly, attempting to get the spots out of his eyes. “What are you doing with the switchboard anyways? I told you specifically not to mess with it.” He glanced at the bouncer, raising an eyebrow. 

“Sorry boss!” Raphael waved. “Balthus thought it would be a good idea if all the bouncers learned how to work this thing,” he explained before he began to fiddle with the switchboard once more. Now… which switch turned off the fog machines again?” 

Raphael’s voice carried across the room as Yuri pinched the bridge of his nose, turning to one of his more experienced employees to take over.

“Caspar, help him out, would you? I know we trained you with the mechanical equipment just in case you didn’t work out as a bouncer.” Yuri gestured, dismissing the question that was clearly already on the rambunctious man’s lips.“Balthus can sweep the floors later. Just make sure Raphael learns the ropes properly.” 

“Sure thing boss!” Caspar nodded vigorously and ran over to the switchboard. He began to explain the switchboard to a clearly confused Raphael. 

“I’ll need to talk to Balthus about letting technologically challenged people near our several thousand dollars worth of equipment,” He murmured to himself, shaking his head.. 

With an exasperated sigh, Yuri finally made his way to the bar and did his best to ignore the steadily growing weight of exhaustion bearing on his shoulders. 

“Alright, Constance. Hapi,” Yuri nodded at the two bartenders, smirking at their matching exhausted expressions. “How did we do tonight?” 

“The night started out pretty slow. Just regulars mainly.” Hapi visibly fought back a yawn. “About halfway through a big crowd came through and bought a lot of drinks. So about an average night for us.” She poked Constance with a glass. “She had an unwelcome surprise though.” 

“Ohohoho!” Constance slammed her fist on the bar, her voice matching Raphael’s in volume. “Yuri, surely you remember that utter plebeian Acheron, no?” She thrust a brightly colored nail at him. “He thought it appropriate to drink far too much and tried to propose to me!” She angrily handed Yuri one of the tills from the two cash registers at the bar. “Me! Constance von Nuvelle! Does he not know who I am?!”

“Breathe, Coco.” Hapi soothed the other woman. “Here ya go Yuribird.” She handed him the other till. “My night was pretty much the opposite of Coco’s here,” She glanced at Constance, who was bent over, putting a bottle of sweet red vermouth into the refrigerator under the counter. “Totally quiet.” She turned around and began wiping down one of the counters. 

“I believe that scoundrel Acheron was the only odd one out in the crowd tonight. Other than that, it was mostly familiar faces.” Constance nodded, straightening up from under the counter. She picked up a bottle of rye whiskey and gestured at the door with it. “When we have visitors from outside of town, there’s always someone getting into trouble.” 

“Alright,” Yuri smiled brightly at the two and took the two tills and walked out from behind the bar, “thanks Constance, Hapi. I appreciate the work that you two do for Abyss.” 

“You pay us, Yuribird. I dunno what you expect us to do.” Hapi snorted quietly. 

“Ohohoho! Leave him be, Hapi. You know what he means.” Constance shook her head and giggled. “Now hurry, hurry! A woman of my quality deserves her beauty sleep!” 

“Remember, Balthus and I are closing tonight.” Yuri began walking towards the oak door on the right side of the dance floor. “Finish up with the bar and you two are good to go.” He put both of the drawers under an arm and opened the door to his office. 

The usually dark office was awash in the same bright light that lambasted Yuri’s eyes in the main room. Yuri let his eyes scan the room for anything out of the ordinary, letting his eyes wander the room, from the small wooden bookshelf in one corner of the room to the larger metal filing cabinet next to the door that was poorly shielding his husband from his view. He chuckled and pretended to ignore the obvious hiding spot, stepping into the room.

A martini glass full of a rich brown liquid with a cherry pushed into the rim of the glass sat on the mahogany desk in front of him. Smiling, he placed the tills on a clear spot on the desk and picked up the drink. 

“Y’know, if you wanted to buy me a Manhattan, you could have done it somewhere that wasn’t our own nightclub.” He chuckled and took a sip. 

“What’s a guy gotta do to surprise his husband around here?” A pair of massive arms wrapped themselves around Yuri’s chest and squeezed him in a hug. A mane of black hair appeared in Yuri’s peripheral vision and he felt a gentle kiss on his cheek. “I mean, come on! How do you know that I didn’t sneak out and get this from that other place across town?” 

“Our Constance was trying to hide the rye whiskey and sweet vermouth.” Yuri laughed and placed the drink down before turning around and returning the hug. “How was your night, Balthus? I didn’t get to see you that much.” The warm tone in his voice was muffled from being squished against Balthus’s chest. 

“Of course she didn’t hide it.” Balthus frowned. “Constance loves to ruin my surprises.” He let go of Yuri and fake pouted. 

“You’ll get over it.” Yuri snickered and patted his shoulder. He walked to the other side of the desk and reached under for the miniature safe for the money made that night. “You’re dodging my question though. How was your night?”

“It was kinda boring.” Balthus shrugged and winced at the screeching noise from the safe. “After I kicked the Acheron creep out, I had a few people try to hit on me and get my number.” He grinned wildly and stared at Yuri. “But they weren’t nearly as sexy as you.” Balthus grabbed ahold of Yuri’s chin.

“Good to know that my sex appeal is why you keep me around.” Yuri smirked as Balthus spluttered in protest, letting go of his chin. “Five years and you still fall for that one, huh?” 

“Hey! I can’t deny the truth! You’re even sexier than the day I met you!” Balthus picked up steam again. “I still have that picture of y-”

“Oh Seiros, not the one where I got chocolate ice cream all over my nice shirt!” 

“That’s the one!” 

“If that’s still your phone wallpaper…”

Balthus nodded, trying to hide his laughter.

You wound me so Balthus.” Yuri threw himself over the desk and clasped his heart. “How ever will I recover from this terribly embarrassing moment?” The teasing tone of his voice grabbed Balthus’s attention. 

“I know a way or two that you can recover.” Balthus bent over and captured Yuri’s lips for a quick kiss. “But I seem to remember you saying that we had to wait until we got home for that.” 

“Let’s hurry up and close this place up.” Yuri scrambled right-side-up and began counting the money out of the first drawer as Balthus began to chuckle. “Oh, and before you get too excited, you’re on sweeping duty tonight because Caspar is helping Raphael with the switchboard.” He shot a glare at Balthus. “I don’t know what you were thinking when you told Raphael of all people to work tech.” 

“It was just a suggestion!” Balthus held his hands up in surrender. “But alright babe,” he nodded. “I’ll go get changed out of this bulky bullshit and get sweeping so we can close up in here.” He winked at Yuri, turned and walked out of Yuri’s office. 

Yuri had just finished emptying the first till when a knock sounded at the open door. He looked up to see Hapi and Constance waiting at the open door. 

“Come in.” Yuri smiled and beckoned them in. “How are things going out there?” 

“Raphael and Caspar just left.” Hapi leaned on one of the extra chairs. “Caspar ran through all of the steps to shut off the switchboard with Raphael twice, just to make sure that he understood what was going on.” 

“He’s still new. He has some time to figure out how it works.” Yuri shook his head slowly. “Maybe I should look into getting a different switchboard. One that isn’t so complicated to use.” 

“Yuri, that’s the best idea you’ve had since you thought to hire Hapi.” Constance laughed and put a hand on the other girl. “We have finished cleaning up the bar and we wanted to make sure that you and Balthus are capable of closing up by yourself.” She picked up the empty martini glass sitting on the desk and frowned. “Almost finished.” 

“Of course we’ll be okay. How many times have we done this before?” Yuri asked the two teasingly. “A time or two at least.” He reached for the other till full of money and began counting it. “Thanks for the drink though. It was delicious.” 

“Of course it was! Hapi made it, it could be nothing less than delicious!” Constance beamed at Hapi, who shook her head. 

“Anyways Yuribird, we’re blowing this popsicle stand. See you tomorrow, same time, same place.” Hapi grabbed Constance’s arm and directed her to the door with the glass still in her hand. 

“Okay, time to finish this stack so it can get to the bank tomorrow.” Yuri rubbed his temples tiredly before picking up the next stack of cash. 

Yuri closed the safe and picked it up, feeling the change shift inside of the bags. Sliding his phone into his pocket, he grabbed the ring of keys off of the desk and walked to the door. Double checking to make sure that he had all of the things he needed, Yuri turned his office lights off and closed the door behind him before locking the door. 

“Balthus? You ready?” He called out into the empty dance floor. “I remember you saying that we had something waiting for us at home.” Yuri grinned wickedly as Balthus opened one of the quiet room doors and stepped out, wearing his typical half-opened white shirt and tight fitting pants. 

“You were waiting for me?” Balthus held the large push broom and a dustpan in his hands. “That was the last room, so let’s take the trash out and head home.” He walked over to the one trash can left out and dumped the pan into the trash. 

“I’ll race you.” Yuri grinned mischievously and walked over to the quiet room doors and began to lock them one by one.

“Oh it’s on!” He watched Balthus pick up the trash can and sprint to the back exit that led out to the dumpsters. “Catch this!” Yuri laughed at Balthus’s muffled yell from outside and he began to pick up the pace. 

“Balthus, hit the lights!” Yuri leaned up against the wall closest to the front exit, the safe sitting right in front of him. He felt the anticipation of the rest of his night building up butterflies in his stomach. 

The room turned dark suddenly and Balthus appeared suddenly next to Yuri, picking up the safe and leering at him. “You ready?” 

“I think the better question is; are YOU ready?” Yuri pulled Balthus down to his level for a searing kiss before quickly walking out the front door. “Well?” He looked over his shoulder to see Balthus with a lovesick grin on his face, “I’m waiting for you.” 

Yuri yawned as he cuddled deeper into Balthus’s naked chest on their king sized mattress. His euphoric high was slowly but surely turning into a sense of relaxation and peace. Tucking one of Balthus’s arms around him, he sighed contentedly. 

“You enjoy that?” Balthus asked, his voice husky and low. 

“I enjoy you babe.” Yuri replied, “You make me feel safe and loved.” 

“Aw hell Yuri, you’re gonna make me blush.” Balthus gave him a cheesy grin. 

“Like I didn’t do that enough tonight.” 

“Shut up. You know what I mean.” Balthus wrapped his other arm around Yuri. “You make me feel at home wherever I am.” 

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”


End file.
